Ghosts
by W Murray
Summary: The companions of the Warden reflect on the woman who touched and changed their lives in some way. Second Chapter: Oghren goes swimming. Hilarity ensues. This is with Fem!Tabris-same Warden as in Halamshiral. Please read and review.
1. Chapter 1: Sten

**Author's Note: Big thanks to my beta reader as always. Sten's story is an homage to _The Seven Samurai_, one of my favorite movies ever. This will be a series of oneshots about the Warden's companions after the events of Dragon Age. As always, please read and review. **

* * *

**Ghosts**

There were seven that stood at the top of the hill, seven against more than a dozen. Parshaara, it was not honorable to go against so few, but they stood between them and the village. The village would not accept the ways of the Qun and so they would be put to sword. That was the only path, the only way when one refuses enlightenment. One of the ashaad had been injured when they had told them they were to be sent to labor camps. That was a mistake, letting the Qunari go, thinking they had scared them off with their weak pitchforks and kitchen knives.

But when they returned, there stood the seven. They were Dalish Elves - he had seen them before. Their leader had drawn a blade so thin he could have bitten it in half. "You will not harm these people. They are friend to the Dalish, and we have extended our hand to them in their hour of need. Return to your lands, Giant." the woman said, her voice cold and her eyes sharp.

She was blond. She had skin cut by blades into some pattern over her face. Her eyes were green. Like the rest of her kind, she wore simple leathers meant to give the greatest speed in battle. While the karashoks snorted behind him at this abomination, he did not smirk nor did he frown. The Sten gave her a long, hard look. She reminded him of someone.

* * *

"I do not understand. You look like a woman."

It had been a cold night. Nights like these made him ache for the jungles of Par Vollen. he desired nothing more than to feel the sands of Seheron against his feet, to smell the spices and tea...But little matter that. Nothing would be accomplished by yearning. It would not answer the arishok's question sooner. But the Warden- the Elf, had walked past him. He took the opportunity to ask his own question.

Her name was Sylrien, but that was insignificant, she was 'Warden' to him as he was 'Sten' to her - stopped and looked at him, cocking an eyebrow towards him. He continued,

"Women are priests, artisans, shopkeepers, or farmers. They don't fight., but you are a Grey Warden. So it follows that you can't be a woman.""

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, sizing the Qunari up. She was trying to find a suitable response for him, he could sense it. Or she was about to attack him. That was also an option. He sighed in dismay, trying to find the right way of expressing it to her limited mind.

"A person is born: qunari, or human, or elven, or dwarf. He doesn't choose that. The size of his hands, whether he is clever or foolish, the land he comes from, the color of his hair. These are beyond his control. We do not choose, we simply are. But you were born a woman. You cannot be a Grey Warden."

She looked down, then back up to him. Then she furrowed her brows slightly before nodding. "You are right, Sten. I am not a woman."

"But you are a-" His mouth opened to form a reprimand and he began to speak in order to expound upon the contradiction further. But then he realized that she had agreed with him.

She folded her arms against her chest - she wore thin leathers and fabrics that clearly showed a female form. The Antivan elf had often remarked upon it and the human Warden had watched her. It was immodest.

"The question you seek to answer, the one your.....arishok? asked of you. He asked you 'what was the Blight?' No?"

Once he had mastered the surprise she caused him by her response coupled with her interruption, he resumed his usual stoic attitude and nodded. "It is so."

"Then tell him this: The Blight is unnatural. The Blight twists all it touches. It distorts and corrupts everything. No person escapes unscathed - unchanged." As she spoke, he did not fail to notice that her hand had drifted down over her stomach; her nails slightly dug into the leather over her lower abdomen. He understood.

"When I became a Grey Warden, I ceased to be a woman. Perhaps that is how it was meant to be, I do not know. Perhaps I was born to this and did not realize..." Her voice trailed into silence as thoughts overwhelmed her mind. Suddenly she looked up at him. "But mark me, Sten. I did not choose this. This is who...this is what I am." He had noted she had a habit of being warm and open when she talked to the other people that traveled with them but now...now her voice was cold, and her eyes razor sharp. '_This is not a topic you shall speak of again,'_ her eyes told him.

He nodded his approval. "We will see."

* * *

The four of them charged, their oddly shaped swords sharp and shining in the light. The other three rained arrows down upon the Beresaad. But they were fighting more than a dozen Qunari in mail that deflected their arrows, wielding swords that shattered their flimsy blades at first contact. This did not mean they were unskilled for several of his brothers fell against them. But in the end they were few against too many. The elf woman lay on the ground, bruised and broken; her body was twisted and bleeding. He approached her and he could see the death overcoming her body but she still reached for her fallen sword, curled her fingers around the hilt so that she might strike out one last time against the foreign monsters.

Sten watched her carefully. She no longer posed any threat to him. The other three elves had run once the four that had charged them fell. The other Qunari did not pursue them for they had to attend to their dead brothers. This elf would be the last to die this day. She looked up at the him, feebly thrusting her sword in his general direction...only to give her last breath in the effort. The sword fell from her hand.

* * *

The Warden was laying on a stone slab, but the body that lay there did not look like the Warden to Sten. There was no creasing of her chin as she regarded the situation before them, there was no careful step. What lay before him was a dead woman, peaceful in her final slumber. The other Grey Warden, now the king, spoke of missing her. He spoke of her sacrifice and of her duty. He told of a glorious monument, of a mausoleum constructed for her in some fortress far away. He spoke that he could not abandon her to some cold, foreign mountain; she would remain here with her people - those that loved her, that knew her. This caused Sten great unease. The only people that could claim to know the woman that rested on that slab were two elves dressed in rags. They were related to the Warden somehow. But this Sylrien was a stranger to him.

When it came to be his turn to pay his respects, he bowed deeply towards the former Warden. When he finally stood, he turned around and left the area. He had to complete _his _mission now. He had nothing to say to this woman he did not know.

* * *

He saw the ghost of the Warden in this woman that had stood defiant till the end. For a moment he wondered who she had been before taking arms against the Qunari. For a moment he wondered if the Qun was not entirely that different from the Blight. It had changed this woman and made her into a warrior that she was not supposed to be, forced her into a role she was not born to that had ultimately led to her end. For a moment he questioned if the Antaam were not unlike the hordes of Darkspawn he had seen tear apart the land, fanatical in changing the world to fit their own, twisted vision.

Parshaara! He was a warrior of the Qun! The moment was soon over. Sten bent down and placed the sword back in the hand of this stranger, but he did not see blond hair matted with blood; he did not see green eyes that were dulled in death. With the blade in her hand, Sten saw the Warden.

"Goodbye Kadan. Ashkost say hissra."


	2. Chapter 2: Oghren

**Author's Note: Much thanks to Princess_Fawna for reading this over. This is a bit more saccharine than Sten's chapter...but I really think Oghren's a big softie. If you haven't taken him to the Guardian, do so NOW. Also, huge Firefly and Princess Bride fan. See if you can spot the references. Oghren always struck me as the kind of guy that might fit perfectly in those flicks. **

* * *

**Oghren**

"Pap!"

"Ancestor's tits, what is it now you little Nug?"

"Pap! Mam will be angry at you for using swears again!"

"You did that just so - I swear, that woman's spewed enough bile to choke a Bronto. And she's going to yell at me for sodding swearing?"

Oghren groaned he trudged up after the rather agile six year-old. "She lives on a lake" Felsi said. "She needs to be taught how to swim."

'"I only dog-paddle," Oghren had argued, but to no avail. "Dog paddling is better than floating belly up like a dead fish," continued Felsi, putting a cap on the discussion

So now he was taking leave from commanding and training the Arl's guards for a few days for some quality father-daughter time.

"Pap! Why you have to move so slow?"

"Cause yer pap's an old man. Has to give little girls a chance to run before he catches an' eats 'em."

"Pap would never do that to me! Mam said she'd take a bronze skillet to 'is head!"

"Eheheheh, trust me Nuglet - yer ole pap's got a slick tongue that keeps yer mam in line. She couldn't raise a finger to me if she tried."

He made a quick forward motion to the girl, a false start that sent her screaming and giggling down the path to the lake's shore. She was barefoot and red-cheeked, just as all children should be. Wasn't as pale as he remembered Dwarven children usually being, but then she had never seen the south-side of a mountain's roof. No Stone sense in her at all. But in the end, that was perfectly fine with Oghren. Stone sense tended to muddle common sense. Ancestors knew that her parents were proof enough of that.

Nuglet was there at the base of the trail, hands on her hips, her lips quirked to the left in an indignant smirk. Then she balanced on one foot, scratching at the back of her shin with the other with her hands on her hips.

* * *

Sylrien looked up at the dwarf, mouth quirked to the left in a playful smirk and hands on her hips. She balanced on one leg, scratching an itch on the back of her shin with a booted toe.

"Come here you mad Dwarven stallion, I just have to have you now. My lust goes unabated, I am sent quivering every time you are near! Take me Oghren, take me now!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming. If it weren't for your fine pair of sodding buns, Warden, I'd never even sign-up with you on this adventuring business. Find me a warm fire and a dry cave and stay there."

"And miss out on all this fun? Don't be crazy. You'd have to be crazy not to want to go jumping up on mountains, slaying dragons and all that."

"Oh, slaying dragons I don't mind. It's the coming-down-the mountain-with-no-path-after-the-secret-tunnels-caved-in that I mind, Warden. "

"Pssh. Nonsense. You love it, don't deny it."

He finally made his way down to where she stood. Thankfully here there seemed to be a downward slope that didn't involve treacherous leaps of faith in order to climb down. At least, for a few meters or so.

"What's got you in such a mood anyways? Usually yer all doom and gloom. Unless you're with Warden Tight-pants. Think you might ever keep it down?"

"Warden Tight-pants? I like that one. But what's not to appreciate on a freezing, frostbitten type of day like today?"

"Aheheh. Yer funny Warden. I like this new side of ya."

This joking was a far cry from the tense and revealing moments in the Gauntlet. The worst of it had been the beginning.

Oghren hadn't been expecting the mess the Warden turned into when the Guardian first posed his question to her. Sylrien had always been a quiet sort; watching her unravelling at a simple question sodding _bothered_ him.

"I should have been first, I should have been the only one. I should have been faster, I should have acted quicker. Then Lora and Nelaros wouldn't be dead, gods above, then Shianni wouldn't have had to go through that. I failed them all, and I live with that guilt everyday. I knew - I had the ability to stop everything, but I didn't want to admit it. Gods, there was so much I should have done...There's your answer. I-I..."

It took Alistair wrapping his arms around Sylrien before she finally stopped her rambling. The Guardian seemed pleased? He accepted the convoluted answer. When his turn came, Oghren decided he wasn't going to let some hoity-toity surfacer ghost give some elusive reference to his many failings. Oghren had laid them out quickly and precisely; the rest of the party had been rather shocked by the clarity of his response.

Still, this jovial attitude coming from her wasn't normal either...

"Hey, you didn't answer my question. What's got you talking like a barmaid after a few?"

"Oghren, how about I tell you a story."

"Still not answering my question, but sure."

They were a few paces behind their party, walking side-by-side on the narrow trail. .

"My mother was one of the Dalish; her name was Adaia. If you think I'm a looker..." Syl gave a soft chuckle as they trudged forward.

"Anyways, she drank. She tried to adapt, to be a 'flat-ear', as she called it. She had been a hunter in her former clan. I guess drinking was a way to dull her senses and cope with living in filth and poverty when she was used to wild forests and complete freedom.

The alienage never really accepted her and the Shems treated her even worse. Still, she loved my father and me, so she stayed and did her best..."

Sylrien paused, frowning at the perpetual snow flurries that seemed to thicken as they came down the mountain. She barked an order to Alistair at the head of the line, and he nodded. They needed to get out of the weather. They soon found a place to rest in a concave indentation in the mountain's surface. She left his side to speak to Alistair. Whatever words passed between him seemed to brighten up his attitude considerably. Oghen looked away, they were most likely going to engage in some spit-swapping. He turned to Wynne, taking out a flask of liquor to share with the freezing mage.

Eventually they got going again when the brief storm died down. They were....Oh, maybe about three quarters of the way down. Oghren had the back of the line again, but Sylrien had since assumed a spot next to Alistair near the front. He shuffled forward, rather nimbly sidestepping Wynne and Genetivi in order to nudge the elf in her side.

"About that story...?"

Sylrien smiled and nodded, lagging behind so she and Oghren were once more at the back of the line. It was interesting that she wasn't keen on sharing this with the human.

"As I was saying, she drank heavily. Though when she was sober, she was insistent on teaching me and my cousins everything she knew about combat. We had to do it in secret...Elves aren't allowed arms in the cities. My cousins were pretty decent, and....well, I was the one that went home with her every night. Whenever my father was working late and she was sober, she put me through my paces: forms and stances, how to read an opponent...

I hated it. I didn't want to be her outlet for a life she missed. I wanted to grow up and have a family and be there for them rather than at the bottom of a bottle."

She grimaced before looking down, biting her lower lip. Oghren had seen her fight, and if she was the student, he could only imagine the teacher. After she stopped speaking he nudged her again. Her head shot up and she nodded,

"Right. So then, one day she was drunk and apparently insulted a Shem noble. It turned into a fight and she apparently kicked his ass."

There was a faint grin on her lips, before vanishing quickly. "The shems came to the Alienage to take revenge on the woman who had insulted their lord. We fought back. There was a riot...it was a massacre."

Sylrien hesitated,

"When they tried to take apprehend Adaia...You should have seen it, Oghren. It was like something in her woke up. I didn't know _that_ woman; I finally got to see the Dalish huntress. Took their swords from their sheathes and struck her attackers down. Everything she had been in her youth all came roaring back. Noble and savage and fierce...She was a flurry of blades. But in the end there were too many. It just took _one_ solid hit to bring her back down to reality where she was an elf surrounded by a dozen guards...She was crying at they beat her. She begged for them to stop, begged for them to have mercy. 'I have a family,' she cried. Bastard shems killed her right underneath the Vhenedahl in plain daylight...You wouldn't have recognized Adaia after they were finished. with her.

Just as well. A few years later the Grey Warden Duncan came and recuited me. He had thought of recruiting Adaia in the past but got her daughter instead. I ended up living the life she wanted afterall."

Oghren gulped, shifting his weight about uncomfortably as they walked. "Sweet sodding ancestors, Warden. I'm sorry. "

She looked over to him and smiled. "Don't be, Oghren. My point in telling you was that underneath the dirty drunk, she was still the huntress. Still as deadly, as dangerous, and as skilled as she ever was. You remind me of her, Oghren. And...well, after what you said to the Guardian-"

"Don't, Warden. It was just what I needed to say." He frowned. Ancestors, she wasn't preaching to him, was she? He hated preaching almost as much he hated riddles.

"Hey, hear me out. Adaia was a drunken mess, and while I certainly didn't like her at times...I did love her, and while Branka may have been...I know as sure there's a sky above that part of her loved you too. Saw a greatness in you that is still there. I see it every day. Smell it too."

Sylrien grinned slightly at him.

Oghren winced when she mentioned Branka, but she had dredged up her own painful memories to comfort him. It was a nice thought, even if she wasn't exactly as adroit as talking about it as she could have been. He rubbed his chin and tugged on his beard; he grumbled and scratched the back of his neck. He leaned back and finally let out a hearty laugh.

"Stick around Warden, I'll give you something else to smell."

His laughter grew louder, soon he roared with it. The small party stopped to see exactly what he was guffawing about, the humans giving him the oddest look.

Then she smelled it.

"Oghren? Oghren!"

Her face turned green as she began to laugh. Soon she began to cough; then she alternated between laughing and coughing, before darting forward to escape the noxious fumes.

It made him laugh all the rest of the way down the mountain.

* * *

She stood at the base of trail, her feet bare and toes gripping the sand underfoot.

"Pap! You comin' t'day or t'morrah?"

"Hold yer horses Nuglet! Sodding kicked some sand in my eye. Gotta get it out."

Her simple gesture had sent him racing back in time to the mountain in the southwest. They hadn't talked anymore about it afterwards; there was enough to do that they didn't have the chance to sit around a campfire and talk about their feelings like sodding wet blankets. They were saving the world!...but then she directed their group to make a detour to Lake Calenhad, and he was reintroduced to the mother of this talking piece of Nug-meat. Even got her to come around on the idea of being with him.

Oghren then began to curb his drinking, little by little. First it was leaving a sip left in the last mug of the night. Then it was leaving one mug for the sorry barmaid who had to clean up after him. When the fighting got fierce, he cut his drinking in half. The last time he got totally hammered was the night Nuglet was born. It was his last hurrah before finally taking on the role of father. When he saw her little eyes looking up at him, and her hands holding one of his fingers...He never touched a drop of the stuff again. He cried then, at the fact that he could have had a part in something so beautiful, and he didn't want to lose a moment of this...this miracle's life. Not only because well, he figured giving birth was about as easy as getting a Bronto across thin ice, but because this was a chance not to screw up. He had been in an alcoholic fog when he had been married to Branka and she had left him, given up on him. He didn't want this little one to give up and leave on him either.

Though he wouldn't mind passing on the swimming. Nuglet had run off again, giggling and splashing in the shallows of the water. "Sylrien!" He called out, barrelling after her. There would be time enough for reminiscing about the past. He had to give a swimming lesson.


End file.
